rationalities of collaboration for language learning in a...

ReCALL 22(2): 247–265. 2010 r European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning 247doi:10.1017/S0958344010000108

Rationalities of collaboration for languagelearning in a wiki

LINDA BRADLEYChalmers University of Technology, Department of Applied IT, Centre for

Language and Communication, 412 96, Goteborg, Sweden

(email: [email protected])

BERNER LINDSTROM AND HANS RYSTEDTUniversity of Gothenburg, Department of Education, Box 300, 405 30 Goteborg,

Sweden

(email: [email protected]; [email protected])

Abstract

For language learning, online environments allowing for user generated content are becomingincreasingly important since they offer possibilities for learners to elaborate on assignmentsand projects. This study investigates what wikis can do as a means to enhance group inter-action, when students are encouraged to participate in constructing text and exchanging peerresponse. The research focus is on exploring what interaction unfolds in the wiki and how itpromotes language learning, from a sociocultural perspective. This interaction is framed bothby affordances in the wiki but also by what is expected from students as language learners inan English for Specific Purposes class environment. The analysis has a multilevel approach,focusing on patterns of interaction and the nature of feedback. The study shows that colla-boration becomes specifically interesting from a language learning perspective. In the findings,on the student wiki pages there are numerous contributions relating to both local languageand global content. Revising co-constructed text opens up possibilities for the students toevaluate existing contributions and it also provides opportunities for them to suggest con-structive changes. In addition, with the environment being web based, we discuss certainbenefits arising from the fact that it allows for user-generated content.

Keywords: wiki, language learning, collaboration, peer work, higher education

1 Introduction

The current trend in Second Learning Acquisition (SLA) is embracing the socio-

cultural perspective, which implies a focus on learners’ participation in joint activity

with others. Previously, individual cognition of language learning was more in focus

(cf. Firth & Wagner, 2007; Hampel, 2006). From a sociocultural perspective, lan-

guage learning is closely connected to language use and how it is developed through

participation in human social interaction mediated by cultural artifacts (Saljo, 2005).

From this perspective, social and mental activities are intertwined in language

activities such as speaking and writing, making the use of language and artifacts the

origin for learning and cognition (cf. Gutierrez, 2006; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006;

Warschauer, 2005). Accordingly, studies of learning from a sociocultural perspective

imply a focus on communication when engaging in joint construction of meaning

through participation in common projects. This study presents students’ interactions

in a project where a wiki was used as an integrated element in a language course for

software engineering students in information technology. The course was targeting

the type of language production that the students will encounter in their future

careers. The main focus of investigation is students’ written communication as

displayed in the wiki environment.

Of relevance for this study is the increase in the number of online environments

allowing for more user generated content in recent years. This has opened up new

ways of working and learning (Alexander, 2006; Conole, 2008; Lankshear & Knobel,

2003). Since social software has become part of the daily life of students at university,

the question of integrating such technologies into learning is a key concern in edu-

cation. Recent CALL discussions also revolve around questions of how to make use

of these technologies, originally intended for social use and entertainment, in study

contexts (Chapelle, 2007; Gillespie, 2008).

When people meet online across cultural and national borders the lingua franca is

frequently English, which implies that non-native speakers of English will need to

express their ideas in English. For language learning this has become a tremendous

opening, giving students the opportunity to engage in various ways and with different

online tools. Therefore, user modified and interactive web environments such as wikis

are potentially beneficial for foreign language learning. It is thus of interest to inves-

tigate the use of such technologies and to explore possible implications for instructional

design. The wiki itself holds certain affordances, i.e. options for interaction in the

relationship between the participants and the tool (Gibson, 1977). The concept of

affordances with wikis in relation to language learning is used in line with Lund (2008)

who claims that ‘‘language learning cannot be seen as de-contextualized from the socio-

technical affordances and constraints of the wiki environment’’ (op. cit.: 36), which

allows for the investigion of unlimited participation and collective language production.

Wiki technology offers web spaces for structuring content and designing for interac-

tion. It is based on a functionality called open editing (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001),

enabling users to add, develop, revise and refine content within a designated online

space. As claimed by Godwin-Jones (2003) ‘‘wikis are intensely collaborative’’ and

suited for groups participating in writing projects.

2 Framing the study

Since recent forms of textual practice are related to conditions offered by user-

generated online applications and environments, this study emanates from the

notion that there are certain collaborative aspects of interest in these environments

also from a language learning perspective. The interaction between users is seen as

content production in relation to given peer feedback, where exchange of ideas and

collaborative productivity are claimed to play a vital role for learning (Donato,

2004). This productivity and progression in student collaboration can be discussed

from the pedagogical framework of multiliteracies developed by Cope and Kalantzis

248 L. Bradley et al.

(2000), which is based on ‘‘the assumption that the human mind is embodied, situ-

ated and social’’(op. cit.: 30). It states that the development of human knowledge is

part of collaborative interaction. This framework holds four distinct interrelated

areas, situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice.

It is built around the notion of the learner as an able designer for learning, which is

also central to this study, where students are part of a process in change, characteristic

of language learning.

2.1 Wikis in language education

For education, there are relatively few empirical studies where wikis have been

applied as a platform for student interaction. In existing studies, the collaborative

potential of the wiki concept as a writing tool is frequently assumed (cf. Arnold,

Ducate & Kost, 2009; Augar, Raitman & Zhou, 2004; Forte & Bruckman, 2006).

Features which are stressed include the promotion of revision and tracking of drafts,

together with the pedagogical challenges of an open editing space, such as the

organizational issues in course management (cf. Garza & Hern, 2006; Lamb, 2004).

As far as empirical research studies of wikis in language learning are concerned, there

are few studies so far discussing collaborative writing in relation to the imple-

mentation of a wiki in the pedagogical environment of language learning, which is

the focus of this article.

Studies of interaction in wiki environments by Lund and Smørdal (2006) and Lund

(2008), show that there is tension between individual and collective ownership. Their

studies discuss the fact that students need to get used to this collective ownership

when writing. They claim that collective knowledge production first starts with local

content development and then moves over to a networked level, a process that needs

to be designed for.

Mak and Coniam (2008) studied the use of a wiki as an online collaborative

writing tool in an English as a second language programme for seventh graders to

find out how students collaborate and what effects collaboration has on the finished

product. Their results show that students produce a vast amount of text in the wiki

environment. This text was expanded, reorganized and corrected by the students

which resulted in improved coherence. However, it is concluded that for the students,

peer reviewing was a new experience and something they were reluctant to engage in.

Therefore, the idea of collaboration was not fully made use of by the students.

Another study by Arnold et al. (2009) shows positive results of collaboration in an

undergraduate course in German as a foreign language. This study investigated the

number of revisions students make on a wiki and what kinds of revision they make in

relation to linguistic accuracy. In this study the participants were willing to embrace

both teacher and self-initiated feedback. This study shows that students not only

performed a large number of revisions of their writings, they also created higher

quality texts due to teacher and peer initiated feedback. These results suggest that

wikis can foster both writing skills and revision performance in linguistic accuracy.

In Kessler’s (2009) study of the usage of a wiki with pre-service English as foreign

language teachers, the results indicate that the students are more willing to colla-

borate about aspects of content rather than form in such an environment. The results

Rationalities of collaboration for language learning in a wiki 249

show that even though the students are asked to highlight both content and language in

their feedback, they are primarily engaged in content-based feedback and not form-

based. This suggests that the lack of attention is due to the level of grammatical accuracy

being acceptable for the informal context of the wiki as a writing environment.

The nature of collaboration taking place in social software such as a wiki, when

used for peer learning, deserves further attention. From previous studies it is possible

to see that students are active contributors when writing, although they may not

always be so familiar with the online environment. However, in these studies there is

a variation in the nature of the collaboration taking place from a language learning

perspective, not only related to linguistic accuracy but also to content and structure,

together with the development of reviewing skills, which calls for further attention.

Therefore, the character of student interaction and the nature of the collaboration is

worth further investigation.

2.2 Collaborating in user generated online environments

Within the concept of collaborative learning it is assumed that there is an added value

in diverse perspectives that individuals can bring to a group process (Dillenbourg, 1999;

Donato, 2004). One of the basic shared assumptions is related to the distinction

between co-operation and collaboration. The concept of co-operation can be explained

as individuals working autonomously in the presence of others, where the individually

constructed contributions are compiled to make a unified whole, at a later stage

(Donato, 2004). Collaboration, on the other hand, takes place when individual con-

tributions to group reasoning enable the group to come to new or changed insights

regarded as impossible to gain by the individuals on their own (Donato, 2004; Cope &

Kalantzis, 2000). Thus, there is a shift from individual mastering in isolation to learning

through participating in a collective activity (Sotillo, 2002). In the nature of what a wiki

offers lies the idea of letting its users revise joint text, which implies that it is in a

‘‘constant state of potential collaborative change’’ (Kessler, 2009). Accordingly, there

are strong arguments supporting the idea that wiki technology could support colla-

boration and offer new possibilities for language learning.

In collaborative language learning, interaction is coupled with revision and feed-

back among participants, a means of identifying strengths and weaknesses in order

to improve performance and develop language skills (Dippold, 2009). The type of

feedback commonly found in language learning is related to both formalist and

functionalist frameworks, which implies that both language system accuracy and the

communicative context are in focus when giving feedback (Hyland & Hyland, 2006).

This is what Liu and Sadler (2003) define as local feedback, i.e. form comments at

word spelling and grammar level, and global feedback, i.e. content comments about

the development and organization of writing.

Previous research in feedback is inconclusive regarding the best ways to provide

feedback, for example, whether it should be corrective or point out problematic areas

(Hyland & Hyland, 2006). Previously, language learning feedback was primarily

concerned with error correction by the teacher and not so much the writing process

(Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Lee, 2008). Over the past years, the traditional role of the

teacher giving feedback has been replaced by alternative ways, one of them being


peer response. Not least through the use of new media, there has been a shift implying

that learners are more engaged in peer work (Liu & Sadler, 2003). Thus, the roles of who

is responsible for giving feedback have been altered, making peers accountable for taking

charge, giving response to each other. It is claimed that peer feedback can generate ideas

and raise aspects of the content that the teachers cannot (Rollinson, 2005).

In this way, Rollinson claims that teacher and peer feedback can be considered

complementary, since teachers often provide precise language comments where peers

may give content based feedback. In addition, peer commenting has been shown to

raise learners’ awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses, which will encou-

rage collaborative learning, providing them with more control and autonomy

(Hyland & Hyland, 2006).

2.3 Research questions

The purpose of this study is to examine the written interaction that unfolds when a

wiki is used as an integrated element in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course

in an engineering programme. The students’ interactions on the wiki is investigated

by scrutinizing their participation and the written contributions they make when

they are offered the opportunity to use a wiki as a platform for the production of

texts and discussions. The wiki allows for different kinds of contribution which may

be productive in various ways from a language learning perspective. When students

are to be engaged in joint construction of text, revising and commenting are central

components. Of central interest in the study is how the student’s various contribu-

tions constitute different forms of interaction and what these may imply for the

student’s language learning process.

Thus, the following research questions are addressed:

1) In an environment allowing for user-generated content, what interactive work

are students engaged in?

2) What is the nature of the interaction regarding student participation as far as

co-operation and collaboration is concerned?

3) What is the potential of wikis for language learning?

3 Research design and methods

This is a design-based case study, investigating student wiki interaction. Framing

the data, first the context around it will be presented. Then, the analysis and the

principles of categorizing the logged student wiki pages will be described, together

with the reasoning behind the chosen excerpts of student interaction presented in

the results.

3.1 Context

The participants in this study were Swedish software engineering students within

computer science, taking a seven-week advanced ESP course in Spring 2008. The

study is part of an ongoing design-based (cf. Brown, 1992) wiki project at the uni-

versity in question and the coursework from 2008 comprises the body of the analysed

empirical data.


Initially, the students were asked to form groups of two or three for interaction on

the wiki. All in all there were 56 students in 27 groups. They were instructed to join

Wikispaces, register for the course wiki and create a group web page. They were

asked to name their page with their own names and link it to the navigation bar on

the wiki start page to make it visible for all users of the space. There were five

students who had used a wiki previously for collaboration at university and one who

had used a wiki at work. Since the wiki was entirely open, it was possible for both

members and external readers to take part in the posted information; however, only

members of the wiki, i.e. the students and teachers could write on the pages. This

arrangement enabled the participants to see the user names of collaborating mem-

bers at the same time as the wiki was open for external visitors.

For the students, the course aims were expressed in terms of being engaged in

language learning for professional development. This implied augmenting and

refining existing competences with the aim of targeting vocational requirements. In

addition to learning professional writing, the agenda included discussions, negotia-

tion and argumentation for professional team processes. Furthermore, for the stu-

dents the wiki was described as an online space that would give them the opportunity

to extend their language learning environment outside the classroom and where they

could practise their linguistic and communicative competence together with fellow

students. The explicit focus on active participation on the wiki was aimed at placing

the responsibility with the students themselves.

The three teachers involved only participated in the wiki as administrators, allowing

access for the students to become members of the wiki, moderating instructions on the

start page and giving feedback on the student web pages after the first assignment. They

were not part of the development of the content of the discussions. In addition, the wiki

assignments performed by the students were not graded.

The course was built around thematic English course modules of relevance iden-

tified for future software engineers and the wiki assignments were connected to these

modules. All in all there were four explicit student assignments on the wiki. There

were deadlines for each assignment, even though the students were free to continue

with further wiki interaction afterwards. Table 1 shows the contents of the course

modules which have a related wiki assignment.

Module one, the introductory theme of the course, dealt with the transformation

of styles from more informal language into formal. The wiki served as a platform

where the students could exchange ideas and start their discussions and writing

process around ‘today’s culture’, which continued in the weekly classes at university.

The second module dealt with another central theme, with two wiki assignments:

argumentation and speech rhetoric, and referencing in academic and technical

reports. In this module, students were asked to write a joint text debating the issue

of using editable online references in technical reports. They were also requested to

find another group to give feedback to. In this way, the students could compare their

own ideas with those of other groups and at the same time focus on giving feedback.

The third course module addressed the process of writing critiques on topical issues,

drawing conclusions from given source material. The fourth and final course

module, which did not have a corresponding wiki assignment, was integrated with

the ongoing bachelor’s projects, introducing the format ‘extended abstract’ to be


presented in English. All course modules involved practising skills in speech and

writing summaries or argumentative texts based on a number of IT-related articles

dealing with academic writing.

Instructions for the four wiki assignments were posted on the wiki start page

gradually by the teachers and they were intentionally kept brief. In this way the

contents of the interaction would not be affected by the assignment instruction.

Quote 1 is the instruction for the first assignment on the wiki. The other wiki

assignments were also given in the same brief fashion on the wiki start page:

Discuss the "Snacking of society" - theme from the texts in the first session.The discussion should be done in your peer group and result in a joint textof approximately 300 words. Take turns in writing on your peer group's pageby choosing "Edit this page" and then saving your new version.

Quote 1. Instruction for the first wiki assignment.

The students worked with their text on their group web page, updating and mod-

ifying it until a specified deadline. There was no specific request to pay attention to

content or language in the instructions. However, in class seminars stylistic variation

was brought up, targeting what characterizes formal writing, subsequently something

students had in mind when writing. The instructions were simply ‘‘take turns in writ-

ing’’. This implied that the students were meant to create their joint text by taking turns

editing their wiki page and saving updated versions of their assignment.

3.2 Data and analysis

The wiki was investigated after the termination of the course, where 25 student wiki

pages were scrutinized. In total there were 54 students in this study, comprising

21 groups of two and four groups of three. In addition, there were two students who

joined the course late and decided to work individually on the wiki. Since the scope

Table 1 Layout of the modules that include the four wiki assignments in the ESP course

Course module content Wiki assignment content

Transformation of styles,

informal–formal language

‘‘Snacking of society’’ theme, introductory discussions,

based on two online popular science articles on

today’s culture

– teacher feedback

Argumentation and rhetoric,

analyses of rhetoric speech

‘‘Negotiation of tasks for speech’’ theme

Referencing in academic and

technical reports

‘‘Wikipedia as reference’’ theme, using editable web

resources as references, pros and cons, finding new

articles on the theme

– students giving feedback to a peer group

Critique writing, summarizing

and commenting

‘‘Public surveillance’’ theme, discussions related to

critique writing

– teacher feedback


of this investigation was scrutinizing peer work, these two students’ wiki pages were

excluded from the investigated data.

The interaction was categorized into the forms of interaction that the groups were

engaged in throughout their entire wiki participation, from the first to the last

posting. The reasoning behind not having a continuous investigation of the wiki

pages during the course progression was linked to the idea of taking the student

perspective. The students were supposed to be able to design their own interaction on

their group wiki pages without interference from the teachers and researchers.

Investigating the wiki in its entirety after the termination of the course thus offered

possibilities to see what interaction there had been on the part of students and how it

had developed throughout the seven weeks of the course.

For the analysis of the student interaction on the wiki, archived versions of student

peer group wiki pages were investigated, as suggested by Arnold et al. (2009), who

made comparisons between archived versions of wiki web pages in their study of

students in an advanced German course. In this way it is possible to follow what

alterations were made, when they were made and by whom. In a wiki, the version

handling is easily accessible for the users, being displayed as one of the top links on

the web pages. It displays date, time and authors of each version. The changes are

shown by means of colour coding.

Concerning ethical issues, all students gave their consent to their postings being

published for research purposes. For the sake of anonymity, all student names and

usernames have been changed.

4 Results

The results of this study show the student contributions found in the wiki, distin-

guishing different types of posted interaction. These contributions range from no

visible interaction among group members on the wiki to a high level of collaborative

text alterations. Apart from posting a piece of individual text, the first visible peer

work is seen in students taking turns posting text on their group web page, co-

operating around a joint theme. Here, the students appear more as individual con-

tributors, though connected to a peer group. Another activity is when the postings

are negotiated and discussed so that existing text is updated with new content. This

shows a higher degree of interaction where contributions imply more collaborative

efforts. Yet another collaborative effort seen in the wiki is giving feedback within

peer groups as well as between groups. The comments are of various kinds, from

editing text and saving the new version to making explicit comments, motivating a

specific suggestion. The excerpts on the following pages are typical instances of the

student contributions found in the wiki, serving as examples of what the interaction

looks like.

Out of the 25 existing groups, five groups fall into the category of posting a full

piece of text not showing any co-operation or collaboration on the wiki. Another five

groups are primarily co-operating on the wiki. This implies that the group members

are acting as individuals contributing to their joint texts on their web page. The

largest category, however, is the one related to collaboration. There are 15 groups

engaged in adding and refining ideas in joint construction together with peers.


Regarding feedback between groups, there are 19 active groups engaged in giving

feedback to another group. When scrutinizing the revisions of text on the student

wiki pages, the number of times the group web pages are updated, i.e. editing and

saving text on each group web page, range from eight updates to 37. The average

number of updates is 19. Concerning the relation between the number of group

participants and the nature of postings, there is no difference between the groups

with three participants and those with two.

The excerpts displayed are representative of student text production from the

different categories found in the wiki. There is a progression from little to more

visible interaction through the wiki version handling. The colour coding of deleted

and inserted text unveils the nature of student contributions on the wiki, posted text

being green (light grey in this paper) and deleted, red (dark grey in this paper). The

categorization will be elaborated further in this section, where excerpts will be

scrutinized and discussed.

4.1 Posting text and co-operating around a joint theme

When posting a full piece of text, there is no visible sign of interaction. This happens

when a piece of writing is posted by one author but is untouched by any other

student in the peer group. Turning to the version handling in the wiki, it is possible to

see a full text of the entire assignment being saved on one occasion, since the text is

entirely green (light grey). Here the text only displays the finished product and not

the writing process. However, posting text does not automatically mean that the

piece of writing has not been elaborated on outside of the wiki, even though the text

has been produced in one edit. Of the 25 groups, five can be placed in the category of

posting text, having no visible co-operation or collaboration on their wiki web page,

as shown in Excerpt 1 from the introductory theme.

Excerpt 1

The next step moving towards more visible interaction on the wiki is co-operation, i.e.

students producing pieces of text for their peer group acting as individuals working

autonomously but in the presence of others. This type of activity is of a co-operative

nature, since the text is processed by individuals working parallel with a joint project

(Dillenbourg, 1999; Donato, 2004). There are rarely any author comments between the

versions written, just updates of newer versions of text. For the students engaged in this

activity, sections of postings are attributed to separate individuals. The following two

excerpts are representative of co-operation, both being from the ‘Wikipedia as reference’

theme. In Excerpt 2, two students in a group take turns writing on the assignment.

Going to the version handling on the wiki page of the particular text version when this


new text was posted, it is possible to see a change in colour from white, implying existing

text, to green (light grey), implying new text:

Excerpt 2

In addition to posting more text on the current assigned topic, the second peer

student has also deleted the three dots, leaving a red trace (dark grey) in the version

produced by the first peer student, for the peer to continue. Even though the two

students may have other means of communicating, such as chatting or meeting in

person, the only interaction visible on the wiki is that of taking turns at writing

independently on the same topic. By the deadline, the text will consequently have

been built by two separate contributors. There is little focus on form in this activity

and more on producing content for the joint topic.

In the next example, Excerpt 3, also illustrating co-operation, the second student

picking up the topic has marked the presence of this being a peer project by

embracing his partner in the text by posting ‘‘We believe’’. Excerpt 3 shows that co-

operating implies contributors having an idea of joint production, even though joint

revision in altering common text is not applied.

Excerpt 3


From what is seen in the version handling of the wiki postings, when co-operating

in writing peers read the previous already-posted text and add more on the topic. In

some instances there has been a clear division of work, when for instance one of the

students clearly takes a stand for and the other student takes a stand against a

specific topic. Thus, even though participants were working on parallel tracks, in co-

operation there is a certain amount of teamwork. Out of the 25 groups, co-operation

was the dominant form of interaction in five groups, even though there were some

traces of collaboration in some of their assignments.

4.2 Collaborating

Moving over to collaboration, this implies more comprehensive and refined inter-

action. Here, students are engaged in writing a joint text but also taking part in each

other’s ideas, evaluating and refining them. They then produce a piece of text each by

taking turns in contributing to the writing process but also going back, revising

existing content. Students add their ideas to their group’s text by editing previous

versions of the text. Now there is no longer any clear division between the separate

group members of the web page, but the writers become owners of the whole text

together. When turning to the revisions in the wiki version handling, it is possible to

see that updates are intertwined and previously posted text is elaborated on by the

different users.

Following a collaborating group from the initiation of a topic to the deadline,

there is a mix of intertwined posted text elaborated by all its group members. An

example of collaboration can be seen in Excerpt 4, where two students take turns

writing the first wiki assignment in ten revisions. In the first revision, one of the peers

contributes with a paragraph of text introducing the topic. In the second revision the

same contributor makes a few changes to his original text prior to leaving it for the

other group member to take over. The green (light grey) is inserted new text and the

red (dark grey) is deleted text:

Excerpt 4

In the excerpt, there are changes made related to spelling and grammar, e.g.

‘effects’ changed to ‘affects’, ‘lifes’ to ‘lives’ and ‘tv-shows and music is’ to ‘tv-shows

and music are’.

From the third to the eighth revision, the two students contribute to their common

text by adding new text and making clarifications of already posted ideas. The last

two revisions are made before the deadline, where the two students contribute with


one revision each of a more proof-reading nature. Excerpt 5 shows the ninth, the

second last, contribution:

Excerpt 5

From the initial first paragraph of the assignment, the text has been extended by two

more paragraphs. In Excerpt 5, the group has tried to make improvements in the text by

extending and altering various phrases. Also, the text has been embraced to become a

joint effort in changing ‘I’m all up for the mobility’ to ‘We are all up for the mobility’.

When collaborating, students take steps to improve their text, even though not all

errors are always corrected. An example of this can be seen in the second paragraph

in Excerpt 5 where the erroneous phrase ‘when it airs on tv’, published in the eighth

revision, is untouched by the two peers throughout the rest of the revisions. This

illustrates that the writing process is an ongoing process that does not immediately

catch all language mistakes. However, by the deadline a final version was presented,

where clarifications and corrections were made to the group’s best joint efforts.

When analysing the 25 peer groups’ archived versions of their wiki pages, it is

possible to see that 15 groups were primarily engaged in collaboration, i.e. adding,

revising and refining ideas in joint construction of text together with their peer. In

their work, there are elements of local, language aspects as well as global, content

aspects in the text revisions.

Within peer collaboration, the text can be altered without any additional comment

in the immediate vicinity of the posted text (as seen in Excerpts 4 and 5). However,

peers quite often address each other with explicit meta-comments next to the posted text,

e.g. requesting peers to continue writing on their joint text: ‘‘nagon kan fortsatta har/

Mattias’’ [one of you can continue here/Mattias]. Frequently, these author comments

between text versions are either removed further along the writing process, or kept as

part of the text saved for the deadline to point out contributions by specific writers.

Excerpt 6 is another example of meta-commenting, from a group in the process of

writing their wiki text in the introductory module on ‘today’s culture’. The first


student makes a statement asking for the peer’s view and the second student replies,

keeping up the dialogue:

Excerpt 6

Consequently, the first student is inviting the second student into a discussion, to

share and develop understanding, which may contribute to the ideas in their writing

process. This type of collaborative interaction differs from co-operation since in

collaboration the students refer back to previous discussion about the existing

content, to refine their own understanding.

Looking further into the nature of revision changes found in the texts, Excerpt 7 from

the introductory module shows how students collaborate to improve their text style,

which was part of that assignment. The excerpt is the last part of a longer text preceded

by four versions saved on this peer group’s web page. The text has been updated by one

of the three peers of the group in question. The students have been altering and adding

ideas throughout their entire writing process, taking turns, becoming joint owners of the

whole text. Here, the students are engaged in formalist as well as functionalist work,

implying that both language system accuracy and the communicative context are in

focus when making alterations (Hyland & Hyland, 2006). However, there are no

additional comments in the text clarifying the alterations made. The text has just been

changed. The green (light grey) is inserted new text and the red (dark grey) is deleted text:

Excerpt 7

In Excerpt 7, the student has altered his peers’ version by adding a comma after ‘at’,

and making a modification of the sentence, deleting part of a phrase and adding ‘are

now being distributed to’. Furthermore, ‘Even if it’s 3am’ has been altered to ‘Even at

3am’. In addition, the excerpt shows that the peer student has turned personal expres-

sions posted in the previous version into a joint concern by deleting the personal

expression, modifying the text by removing the personal pronoun from ‘‘I think that’s a

good thing’’ to ‘‘we think that’s a good thing’’. The style and communicative approach

has changed from being more informal and characterised by the views of one person, to

representing a more general perspective which the group members have contributed to.


Thus, modification of text elements by developing the contents may alter the genre,

transferring it from an informal style to a more formal one.

Concerning the specific feedback assignments displayed in the wiki, the teachers

gave feedback for the first time after the deadline for the first assignment. The

teachers then made use of the version handling of the wiki to let the students see

comment suggestions in colour. Since text marked in green (light grey in this article)

implies inserted new text and text marked in red (dark grey in this article), deleted

text, the alterations were easy to follow.

By requesting the students to go to the version handling on their web page and to

the teacher’s updated text version, it was possible to see the specific teacher’s com-

ments in colour. This is an example of the last part of the teacher comment on a

student group’s web page, where the teacher asks the group to go to the version

handling, called ‘history’ in Wikispaces, to get a better overview of the comments

given: ‘‘ysee comments above in text. You can go to ‘history’ to see the changes in

colour./Gitte’’. The version handling of the wiki was also used in the analysis of the

empirical data as described in section 3.2.

After the deadline of the second assignment it was the students’ turn to give

feedback, one peer group to another. The students were instructed to choose another

group on the wiki to give feedback to. In order for the students to find another group

that had not yet received feedback by another peer group, they had to go through a

number of web pages. Feedback procedures were practised in a workshop in class in

the first course module. In addition, students could follow the teachers’ method of

giving feedback on the wiki after the first assignment, by editing a page and saving

the comments in connection with the written text.

Turning to the peer feedback on the group web pages, when students respond to

each other there is a combination of global, content-related and local, language-

related comments (Liu & Sadler, 2003). In Excerpt 8, one peer group gives feedback

to another group, offering both global suggestions after ‘Comment’ and local sug-

gestions in the form of direct alterations in the text:

Excerpt 8


Global feedback mainly concerns whether arguments raised are feasible and well

communicated. These comments involve more than just editing a single word or

sentence, for example, what is pointed out after each ‘Comment’ in Excerpt 8. Local

linguistic comments are given by making changes directly in the text by deleting and

adding new content, as seen in Excerpt 8 when, for example, changing ‘policys’ to

‘policies’.

Frequently, reviewing suggestions are marked with brackets or a deviating colour

together with giving a remark as seen in Excerpt 9. In this example the revising group

cannot target the exact reason for suggesting an alternative pronoun, ‘‘who’’, other

than it ‘‘feels more correct’’. This is an example of the difference between peer

feedback and teacher feedback, the latter being more precise in putting words to

linguistic explanations.

Excerpt 9

For the peer feedback, part of the second wiki assignment, students were requested

to find another group in the navigation list on the wiki and provide comments. The

task was open, though all groups had already received teacher feedback so the

groups could mimic the pattern of addressing other groups given by the teachers.

There were six groups that did not engage in this activity of giving feedback to

another group, even though they may have been given feedback by one of the 19

active groups. This explains why not all 25 groups are found in table 2. The following

distribution was found in the wiki from 2008:

Table 2 shows that the most frequent type of feedback was giving peer comments

at the end of the assignment on the group web pages, an activity which all groups but

two were engaged in. When investigating the nineteen given end-comments, on seven

group web pages, they were global, non-revision-oriented overall comments, as

shown in Quote 2.

Good explanation of what a wiki is at the beginning. Good structure and niceflow thorugh the text. Nothing to complain about.

This type of general comment is an ‘‘easy way out’’ of putting little effort into peer

commenting, which will be unlikely to contribute to much improvement for the

receivers.

Table 2 Feedback found in the 19 groups that were given feedback after the second assignment

Type of feedback Number of comments in groups

End comments only 4

Comments in text only 2

End comment1 comments in text 13


However, on twelve group web pages the comments were global, though more

targeted, as seen in Quote 3, giving specific recommendations or questioning the

interpretation of a concept.

Comment:Short and concise description of the pros and cons of wikipedia. Maybe youcould have written about some additional sources and compared themagainst Wikipedia.Some confusion regarding the words scientific and "scientific".Do you mean scientific pages on Wikipedia or other sources of scientificarticles?

Receiving this type of comment is likely to contribute to the language learning

process, even though it may be difficult to make changes in the text.

Apart from giving end comments, a majority of the student groups also gave

comments in the text, as shown in table 2. These in-text comments included both

local, language oriented, and global, more content-oriented comments.

5 Discussion and conclusion

Software engineering students using a wiki as an interactive tool within the frame-

work of language learning were engaged in peer work in a number of ways. Even

though the students were encouraged to take turns editing and modifying their

assignments jointly on their web page, this work was carried out in quite different

ways, which is demonstrated by the findings. Turning to research question (1)

regarding what interactive work students are engaged in, the version handling of the

wiki gives a picture of how the students have been contributing. In the analysis of the

text versions produced, some of the contributions show more collaborative effort

and some less. This study shows that the nature of the contributions has implications

for language learning as far as the process of practising writing skills and the ways of

giving peer response are concerned. The collaborating groups produced more ver-

sions of revised text, with a higher number of edits in their assignments.

The type of contribution with the least visible interaction is a posted piece of text

where further interaction between group members is not visible. Since there is no way

of seeing how much of the writing process was applied in such posted pieces of text, it

is not possible to determine whether the students were engaged in collaborative work

at all. Instead, it could be one person writing the entire piece of text. The wiki

functionality only allows one person at a time to edit the same text.

Concerning question (2) about the nature of the co-operative and collaborative

work students are engaged in, co-operation implied joint individual posting to a

common theme. Here, the students expressed their views in a dialogic mode, taking

turns at posting ideas. Yet another type of contribution was through collaboration,

where students produced joint texts and then made alterations and additions. For

this latter type, collaborative writing, a wiki is particularly suitable, since it is pos-

sible to go straight into the text and edit at a targeted position. Also, when turning to

the version handling in the wiki, the colour coding can be helpful as support to see

what another writer or commenter has posted.


As stated by Donato (2004), ‘‘interaction does not categorically mean collabora-

tion’’, though response work is tightly connected to collaboration around editing

and revising. When the students were asked to provide constructive comments to

each other, there was a variation in the feedback given. Even though the students

were not requested to target their response in any specific way, it turned out that

some response was more linguistically oriented whereas other was more focused on

content. Quite often students applied a combination of both approaches when being

responsive to fellow students. However, the findings show that there are more lin-

guistic comments. This indicates that students were probably aware of the fact that

both formalist and functionalist competences deserved their attention in language

learning. The data also shows that the given feedback is more or less explicit, targeting

a range of relevant issues concerning both global and local areas of the text. Such

feedback, as offered by the peers, may play an essential role in language learning, as

suggested by, for example, Hyland and Hyland (2006). The fact that it is an elec-

tronic environment enhances the quality and immediacy of the feedback, inviting the

students to go straight into the text, which facilitates more commenting on a more

detailed level. A process that allows more revisions to improve text production is

something that has a strong potential from a language learning perspective.

To question (3) about the potential of wikis for language learning, this study shows

that from a language learning perspective collaborative work becomes particularly

interesting. Revising a co-constructed text opens up possibilities for evaluating

existing contributions that have been elaborated on previously and it also facilitates

critical evaluation and suggestions for constructive changes. In addition, with the

environment being web based, it facilitates the writing process, allowing users to

write whenever they are inspired. A majority of the groups were in fact engaged in

collaboration, which can be explained by the collaborative nature of the wiki tech-

nology, inviting members to contribute in a simple way. Even though it is possible

for others to supervise the interaction on the wiki, and despite the fact that all editing

is logged, the wiki is being used as a collaborative platform by most groups. This

implies that the students are prepared to accept the fact that they might be watched,

in exchange for the benefits of working with their joint assignments.

The fact that the content of the assignments was not controlled by the teachers,

allowed the students to take command over the design of their own web pages. The

teachers’ assignment instructions were intentionally brief, giving students the opportunity

to develop the content of their texts themselves. This is also practised by Kessler (2009)

who points to the advantages of allowing for ‘‘observation of student behaviour without

undue influence from the prompt’’ (op. cit.: 83). The students should be empowered to

make their own design decisions. Since the wiki assignments were part of the compulsory

course tasks, there was a large amount of activity on the part of the students.

The framework of multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), which is based on

four components of pedagogy: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing

and transformed practice, offers a deepened perspective on the implications of col-

laborative work. It is based on the fact that motivation is a key factor in making

persons interested in learning. The framework has its starting point in the situated

practice and related to this article, the wiki as technology caters for a motivating

space creating an interest for the learners. The next component, overt instruction, is


the collaborative efforts in the form of active interventions between teachers and

students, within and between peer groups. It is the experiences and activities within

the learner community that facilitates the conscious awareness of what is being

learned. In the wiki it is the interactive work that the students are engaged in, in

discussing and refining their language. The third component, critical framing, relates

to the fact that the students can stand back and view what they have learned in a

critical way. Contributing to the joint wiki page implies both being creative and, at

the same time, questioning other people’s ideas. To make this possible, it requires

that the students have gained the necessary personal and theoretical distance from

what they have learned and that they have framed their growing mastery. The final

component, transformed practice, implies that students have become reflective. They

can now show that they are able to implement understanding from overt instruction

and critical framing to apply and revise what they have learned.

Finally, a key issue for students of higher education is how learning elements of a

course are tied to course objectives and assessment. In this study, students were

recommended to interact in the wiki as a means of enhancing their communicative and

linguistic capability within the framework of an ESP course. For this category of stu-

dents who are digital natives (Prensky, 2005), this implies not only that they are used to

adopting the new area of literacy, but also the way of learning that goes with it, which is

more task oriented and experiential (Conole, 2008). In a language learning project using

social software, this study shows that students will try to interpret what is expected of

them. However, Lamb (2004) claims that a wiki will work most effectively if students can

have control over the process of posting and that authority ‘‘undermines the effectiveness

of the tool’’. This statement is a challenge to implement in a language learning context.

When finding ways to combine the language learning situation with the web based

environment of social software it will be possible to promote collaborative forms of

interaction and reach what Cope and Kalantzis (2000) call a transformed practice.

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